Jack Whitehall's show at the O2 confirms him as one of the freshest comic
talents around, says Dominic Cavendish, even if he did corpse on a
vital punchline

For a heart-stopping minute on Monday, there was a power vacuum at the heart of Whitehall. Reaching the climax of his set, on the final night of his first arena tour, Jack Whitehall was lost for words. Relaying an exchange on a train between a hen party from Newcastle and the bloke pushing the refreshments-trolley he got so distracted corpsing at his Jamaican-sounding regional accents he forgot the punchline.

“Oh my god, what does she say?” he asked, screeching expletives. It looked like he might literally have to slope off with his tail between his legs, wearing as he was (the wrong way round) a lion costume that set the seal on a running joke about his ferocious-ridiculous obsession with The Lion King.

But he recovered his wits and tried the routine again. Earlier, he had advised us of his maxim “Get it wrong, gotta be strong” – and the need to push through embarrassing situations with a heedless spirit. Little can he have imagined just how fully he would need to test that strategy on his big night.

Was the gag worth the wait? Probably not. Was this the finest 90 minutes or so of material a comedian has ever unleashed at the O2? No – even if, at 25, Whitehall has made his mark as the youngest to have played a full solo set there. And yet by nearly snatching humiliating defeat from the jaws of precocious victory, the natural-born scamp reminded us why he is such a welcome breath of fresh air.

There’s a vulnerability about him that’s genuine, a goofiness that’s not put-on, though it can sometimes seem that way. Hardly ever off our tellies these days, his spin on the arena format jokily overexposed him further – putting him on a stage in-the-round, so that he had to keep turning to face each section of audience. It was a recipe for disaster, and yet the silliness of it and the needless daring won you over.

First whizzing into view on a Segway to a blast of pyrotechnics, he mined his posh upbringing for more faux-arrogant, self-deprecating humour, kept things puerile with anecdotes about testicular check-ups and bedroom disasters and continued his double-act with his father Michael who popped up – feigning disapproval – on the video interludes. Where he goes from here, having come so far, so fast, is anyone’s guess, but I hope he keeps at it. Without him the world would be a duller place.